Boat repair

Occasionally having to fix a boat is a part of life for a canoe and kayak racer.  As you might guess, whitewater racers have to do it the most, but no boat built from composite materials is immune to mishaps like the one I committed last Saturday.  Here's a pictorial account of what I'm doing to get my race boat back in order.


When there's a boat that needs fixing, my woodworking shop becomes a boatworking shop.  I keep ropes attached to the ceiling for just that purpose.

The worst part of the damage, where the hull was broken through, is where the brown blob in the middle is.  On Monday I sanded the area, grinding out as many broken fragments as possible, and filled the break with some thickened epoxy (that's what the brown blob is--I thickened the epoxy with some wood dust from my belt sander).  I let it cure until today (Wednesday) so it will be good and hard and won't gum up the sandpaper when I sand it.  The jagged lines radiating above and below the blob are not really as bad as they look; they are just breaks in the gelcoat.  I have filled them in with some G-flex epoxy.

Now, I have sanded the cured epoxy as flush with the rest of the hull surface as possible.

The next step is to patch the area.  The Kevlar (gold-colored) patch will cover the place that was actually broken, where the thickened epoxy filler is.  The e-glass (white) patch will cover a greater area that includes the Kevlar patch.

The patches have been wetted out with resin and applied (you can't see the e-glass patch because e-glass becomes invisible when it is saturated with resin).  I have taped a piece of plastic wrap over the area and squeegeed the air bubbles out of the resin.  After the resin cures and I peel off the plastic wrap, it will leave a nice smooth surface that should require little sanding, if any.

The boat will not be as pretty as it was before I broke it, but it'll float, and I hope it will glide almost as well as before.  And the patch will be underwater where people won't see it anyway.